Current Project: Delivering Food to Home-Bound People
Each weekend during March, April, and May, either on a Friday or a Saturday, FFRFSLC members will drive to the Utah Food Bank’s distribution center where they will pick up pre-packaged boxes of food and then take them to Food Bank clients who aren’t able to leave their homes. It takes about three hours to complete the whole process.
If you would like to help but have limited availability, you may sign up for just a one-time delivery. If you have more free time, you may sign up for deliveries on multiple weekends.
To sign up, please send an email to ffrfslc@gmail.com. On your first delivery you’ll be paired with an FFRFSLC member who has done it before. If you are able to do deliveries on multiple weekends, then after you’ve done it once you might be paired up with a first-timer on subsequent weeks. (For security purposes, deliveries are always done in teams of two people.)
Past Project: Helping People Gain Freedom From Polygamy
During the month of August 2025, the Salt Lake Chapter of the Freedom From Religion Foundation ran a fundraising campaign for Holding Out Help, an organization that assists people who are trapped in restrictive polygamous communities and want to leave but don't have the means to do so on their own. Money that FFRFSLC members and other local freethinkers donated to this campaign was matched, dollar for dollar, by a charitable grant from the national FFRF office, thus doubling the effectiveness of each local person's donation. A total of $2,500 was raised during this campaign.
Holding Our Help has a long track record of success in helping people get free from polygamous group control. It is estimated that there are 60,000-100,000 polygamists living in the Western United States, Canada, and Mexico, with a majority of them residing in or around Utah. Each group, family, and individual has a unique story, but most of the individuals served by Holding Our Help have faced forms of bondage and trauma. When someone leaves or is kicked out, they often experience loss of family, financial ruin, feeling judged, abandonment, and loneliness. Holding Out Help is a safe place for them, providing a loving and caring body of people to give hope, counseling, legal aid, tutoring, and to assist with resources needed for a new and bright future.
Although our FFRFSLC fundraising campaign has now ended, Holding Out Help's need for money and other assistance is still great. If you would like to support their efforts by giving financial donations, by volunteering your time, or by providing needed supplies, check out their website by clicking here...
Past Project: Tiny Tim's Foundation For Kids
In June of 2025, members of our Salt Lake Chapter of the Freedom From Religion Foundation donated their time to make some wooden toys for Tiny Tim's Foundation for Kids.
Tiny Tim's provides more than just toys to children in need. They also deliver clothes, school and hygiene kits, and more. If you'd like to help them in their mission to improve the lives of children in America and around the world, check out their website by clicking here...
FFRFSLC at the 2025 Sunstone Symposium
FFRFSLC had a display at the August 2025 Sunstone Symposium, an annual conference for anyone with an interest in things Mormon and Mormon-adjacent. Attendees included active Latter Day Saints, fundamentalist Mormons, and ex-Mormons. This year's symposium was especially noteworthy as it celebrated the 50th year of people gathering at Sunstone to share ideas and to build community.
Most of the people who visited our table said they were unaware of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, but once they found out what we do, they expressed enthusiastic agreement with it. Even people we talked with who were devout believers agreed that allowing the government to decide which religious belief system Americans should follow harms everyone, including the sect or sects that the government has chosen to promote.
FFRFSLC and the Centennial of the Scopes (Monkey) Trial
In July of 2025, the Salt Lake Chapter of the Freedom From Religion Foundation commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Scopes (Monkey) trial, in which a Tennessee teacher was found guilty of the “crime” of teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution. Many people know of this trial thanks to it being dramatized in the classic film Inherit the Wind. The Scopes trial profoundly shaped science education for decades. Teaching evolution wasn't decriminalized in Tennessee until 1967.
Although teaching evolution in Utah was never officially against the law, efforts have long been made to force the teaching of "creationism" in Utah schools alongside evolution. The most recent attempt was in the 2006 state legislative session. Senate Bill 96, sponsored by Senator Chris Buttars, would have directed the Utah State Board of Education to ensure that any instruction regarding the origins of life or the present state of the human race: (i) must not endorse a particular theory; and (ii) must stress that not all scientists agree on which theory is correct. The bill was passed by the Senate but not by the House.
FFRFSLC's commemoration of the Scopes Trial Centennial featured a University of Utah anthropology professor who is an internationally recognized expert on evolution, Dr. Alan Rogers, author of the book The Evidence For Evolution. He talked about the evidence for and against evolution that was known in Darwin’s time and at the time of the Scopes trial, and then contrasted that with what’s known today.
This event was well attended by many people from the general public who had previously been unaware of the FFRF and its work.